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Introducing Dr. Eric Westman’s Get Insulin-Free Today (GIFT) Program

Just look at the current statistics for diabetes in the United States and it’s not a pretty picture–26 million children and adults now have it and the numbers are on the rise to the tune of nearly 2 million new diabetes diagnoses annually. Another 79 million Americans have prediabetes and are well on their way to becoming a part of the soaring diabetes statistics. Ten percent of the population and one in four senior adults are enduring the management of this disease at a cost of $245 BILLION a year and it’s estimated that one-third of the country will be afflicted with mostly Type 2 diabetes by the year 2050 with estimated healthcare costs in the TRILLIONS! It’s not a pretty picture, but there is one man who is trying to do something about it to help turn things around–Dr. Eric C. Westman, MD, an internist, low-carbohydrate diet researcher, and nutritional health practitioner at the Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic in Durham, North Carolina (he is also the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling 2010 book The New Atkins For A New You as well as my coauthor on Cholesterol Clarity in 2013 and the forthcoming August 5, 2014 book Keto Clarity).

Dr. Westman has long had a dream to take his many years of medical experience and application of a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic dietary therapy for a wide variety of conditions directly to patients in their homes to personally coach them back to health. He’s especially interested in helping people with diabetes come off of their insulin forever (in fact, he and I have already discussed that if Victory Belt offers us another book contract, we’d like to write Blood Sugar Clarity). After helping hundreds of patients lose weight and get their health back in clinical practice for more than seven years and watching dozens of his patients come completely off of their insulin with diet change rather than prescription medications, he’s become convinced this method will someday become the standard of care.

His groundbreaking work at Duke has been the subject of multiple scientific studies and national presentations while his patients have been enjoying better and healthier lives as a result. Diabetic patients who have been on insulin for more than a decade are coming off their dependence on it thanks to Dr. Westman’s work. Now he’s introducing a brand new program called Get Insulin-Free Today (GIFT) that is aimed directly at providing an intensive series of house calls aimed at helping people with diabetes at coming off their insulin for good.

Because it is brand new, Dr. Westman will only be making this service available to patients in the Triangle area of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina area. Your personalized visit will include an initial detailed medical evaluation, customized follow-up visits based on your personal health needs, hands-on assistance at stocking your refrigerator and pantry with the appropriate foods, and guided tour through the grocery store to locate the foods that will keep you on track in your pursuit of ditching the insulin.

Once we finish the editing process for Keto Clarity, I’ll bring Dr. Westman on my podcast to discuss the details about his Get Insulin-Free Today (GIFT) plan to help diabetics find hope again. Stay tuned!

Sounds like a wonderful program, but my first thought from the title was he was starting a program to give people free insulin, and I couldn’t understand why he would do that–LOL!

GIFT is a great and fitting acronym, but a little confusing.

LLVLCBlog

I thought the same thing at first, but the dash hels make it clearer. And in a way it is free insulin–NONE!

Phil Thompson

I can’t help but feel that having “Type II” in the program name or publicity somewhere would improve clarity and avoid T1 backlash.

LLVLCBlog

Obviously a Type 1 will be insulin dependent. But he’s targeting Type 2 people who still have some beta function left. Good suggestion…I’ll let him know.

gretchenb

I agree it’s misleading not to say this is for type 2, and not all type 2 at that. I can envision people with type 1 being told by their friends: “There’s a program at Duke that will let you eliminate insulin.”